Story Behind the Success: Augusto Aubry

I am very grateful, proud, and honored to be the recipient of the 2022 IEEE Fred Nathanson Memorial Radar Award, which offers the opportunity to perpetuate the memory of Fred Nathanson, an exceptional educator and a leader in radar research. 

Before summarizing the story of my career and the key steps to winning this prestigious IEEE Award, I would like to thank some special people, without whom I could have never reached this huge milestone in my life. First of all, I would like to thank all folks within the Radar Systems Panel Awards Committee for recognizing my contributions among many deserving candidates. I would also like to thank Dr. A. Farina for his wonderful endorsement and for his continuous encouragement to do my best in both research and teaching. A special “thank-you” goes to my esteemed colleagues:  Prof. S. Blunt, Dr. J. Guerci, Dr. M. Picciolo, and Prof. P. Willet for supporting my nomination with their impressive letters of commendation. Surely, I am grateful to my great friend, Prof. A. De Maio, who has always provided me with wonderful support throughout my career as a mentor, including a splendid letter for my successful nomination.

Now, let me sketch a glimpse of my professional career. I received both my bachelor's and master's degrees in Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy, in 2004 and 2007, respectively. After that, I obtained a scholarship for a Ph.D. position in Electronic and Telecommunications Engineering at the same university. My Ph.D. work considered the analysis and design of communication systems, principally in the area of MIMO Multiple Access Channels (MAC). I was truly fortunate to have Prof. A. Tulino and Prof. E. Conte as my Ph.D. supervisors. Such studies enabled me to strengthen my knowledge of information theory, statistical signal processing, and optimization theory. This knowledge was further enhanced during my experience as a visiting scholar at the Department of Wireless Communications, Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent, NJ, USA, 2009.

Then, a significant breakthrough in my career occurred at the beginning of my post-doctoral activity on radar signal processing under the supervision of Prof. A. De Maio, in 2011. We started amazing technical discussions on a daily basis on the design of bespoke and advanced radar waveforms, which continues to be one of my favorite research topics. In that period, I also started to interact with Dr. A. Farina and Prof. M. Wicks, two gentlemen, and leaders in radar research, conducting activities on cognitive radar waveform design. Since then, Dr. A. Farina has become a reference point for my research.

In 2012, I went to the Hong Kong Baptist University in Hong Kong as a visiting researcher in the Department of Mathematics, collaborating with Prof. Y. Huang on research topics concerning non-convex optimization techniques. This period provided me with fundamental skills for my education. Indeed, such optimization/mathematical skills and tools have enabled me to find the solution to challenging radar signal processing and waveform design problems.

Later on, as I left Hong Kong and came back to Naples, I continued my collaboration with Prof. A. De Maio via a Post-Doc position at the CNR Remote Sensing Institute (IREA), Naples, Italy, also collaborating in the technical education of some Ph.D. students, namely, Dr. L. Pallotta and Dr. V. Carotenuto, who eventually became brilliant professors at Roma TRE University, Rome, Italy, and at the University of Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy, respectively. 

In 2015, I attended my first IEEE Radar Conference in Washington DC. Here, I had the chance to meet many famous personalities whom I had known through my readings. With some of them, I had the pleasure to share ideas and opinions concerning technical radar aspects through very meaningful conversations over the years. I immediately felt this wonderful community as my technical home. Since then, every year I have been looking forward to attending the IEEE Radar Conference and it is now for me an annual milestone, where I have the possibility to learn about new radar concepts and achievements within the community in addition to meeting and interacting with my friends. For example, at the 2017 Conference, I met Dr. M. Govoni for the first time. He showed some interest in the research activities conducted by Prof. A. De Maio and me and sponsored a “US Army” grant award for research on the design of advanced radar waveforms and the development of algorithms to acquire environmental awareness. In this regard, I'm also delighted to mention that in 2018 the AESS acknowledged the impact of one of my first studies on radar waveform design, being the co-recipient of the 2013 Best Paper Award (entitled to B. Carlton) of the IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems with the contribution entitled “Knowledge-Aided (Potentially Cognitive) Transmit Signal and Receive Filter Design in Signal Dependent Clutter.” I am also very proud and honoured that in 2020 I was elected a Member of the IEEE AESS Radar System Panel.

In parallel, my academic career at the University of Napoli Federico II has kept moving forward. I eventually ended up being appointed for the positions of assistant professor without tenure, assistant professor with tenure, and associate professor in 2016, 2018, and 2021, respectively. Definitely, I'm grateful to Prof. E. Conte, Prof. A. De Maio, Dr. A. Farina, my lovely wife Serena and daughter Azzurra, and my family, who (seeing in my eyes a huge passion for research activities) have continuously encouraged me to pursue my dreams. Needless to say, being considered as a nominee for this prestigious award and appointed for the position of associate professor required significant efforts, intertwined with moments of discouragement and fortunate encounters and collaborations. 

Over the years, I have continued establishing international collaborations with important research groups that operate in the radar signal processing field. Concerning this point, in 2016 Prof. C. Clemente invited me as a visiting researcher at the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK, in order to conduct joint activities concerning the development of techniques for mitigating wind farm clutter. Moreover, in 2017 I was a visiting researcher at the NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE), La Spezia, Italy, collaborating with Dr. P. Braca on research topics related to covariance matrix filtering for adaptive environment learning. We made a good friendship, and our scientific collaboration is still active and quite fertile; indeed, STO CMRE has also sponsored a Ph.D. position at the University of Napoli Federico II. Within this framework, our bright Ph.D. student, A. Marino, won the 2021 Young Scientist Contest Award at the 2021 Signal Processing Symposium. Another fruitful collaboration and close friendship sprouted in 2018 with another Ph.D. student at the University of Napoli Federico II, M. Maffei, while doing research on spaceborne radars. 

In summary, I consider myself very lucky for having the chance to do what I like as a job, addressing challenging research activities, as well as educating future radar engineers. Also, I do hope to keep my scientific collaborations active, and I look forward to establishing new ones. 

Last but by no means least, many thanks to Dr. Nathanson's family who keeps endowing funds to bolster the education and careers of bright young researchers in the radar field.